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A brief contemplation
This being International Blog Against Racism Week, I feel like I have been woefully behind in reading. I don't feel guilty for not posting, because my words? Not worth much. There are smarter, better people out there. Go check them out in the links at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ibarw
But I wanted to post a thought I had.
I understand exactly why so much racism comes from people who have or do run in academic circles, or from those who have received a great deal of higher education, especially when it comes to the literary types.
It occurs to me that if you walk into any major university bookstore's literature section to see the text books and reading selections, you will find that the books dedicated to dissecting, studying, and otherwise critically analyzing English-language works from American and British authors are huge. They're doorstoppers. Some of them are on their 50th editions. The shelves of Western literature (majority English language) go on for a while, the tomes are thick and obviously very important and expensive. The shelves of other literature? Usually much smaller. The books aren't so big, there aren't so many of them. If you're lucky to go to a very large, diverse campus, you might find a section or two in a few areas. If you, like a lot of people, go to community college or a smaller university, you're lucky to find that one Chinua Achebe book that every professor ever assigns to freshman to clear some "diversity" quota (without actually believing in diversity, I should add).
If one judged the quality of the literature by the amount of books and classes, one would be forced to surmise that English Literature is clearly superior and non-Western literature is a pathetic joke. Which isn't actually true, but the signals are clearly there, the underlying message is clearly demarcated: "Play with that Chinese stuff or that Spanish-language gibberish or that junk from Africa if you must, but when you're ready to be a dignified grownup, we'll be over here with our giant Treasuries of Old White Men Stories when you're ready to join us."
It also occurs to me that the way we in America structure the study of other folks' literature and culture adds to this. If you take a general literature course, you can be assured that you will sit for a semester and have Thing Written By White People In English shoved into your brain ad nauseum. For us, literature defaults to Western, English-language works.
You have to seek out the literature of other cultures in special classes or courses of study that are set aside by themselves, as though they are the special education kids who are so disabled as to need their own short bus and their own special class away from the rest of the smarter, stronger kids. You know, the ones which a great deal of pity is given, but not a lot of serious thought. It's like everyone else's literature is some feeble, sorry little attempt that we must politely give lip service to, the way you tell a child they were the prettiest princess out there even if they were the worst, before we get back to Real English.
In fact, we don't take literature courses here in America, we take English courses. In academia, All Literature = English and anything else is a curiosity, an also-ran.
So I'm not really surprised when I see someone who comes from that academic tradition spouting racism, intentional or unintentional. It didn't surprise me to see people who pride themselves on being decided academics and overeducated telling others that their readings weren't correct, weren't in keeping with the high critical standards they'd been instructed in and did so in defense of racially problematic texts.
Nor am I surprised that it's taken me so long to get to this point in my journey to peel off the layers of racism that I've been embedded with for so many years. Because I have, and I still have that racism and what White Privilege and that hideous cultural training with me, even though I hate it and want to get rid of it.
But that was my brief thought.
ibarwBut I wanted to post a thought I had.
I understand exactly why so much racism comes from people who have or do run in academic circles, or from those who have received a great deal of higher education, especially when it comes to the literary types.
It occurs to me that if you walk into any major university bookstore's literature section to see the text books and reading selections, you will find that the books dedicated to dissecting, studying, and otherwise critically analyzing English-language works from American and British authors are huge. They're doorstoppers. Some of them are on their 50th editions. The shelves of Western literature (majority English language) go on for a while, the tomes are thick and obviously very important and expensive. The shelves of other literature? Usually much smaller. The books aren't so big, there aren't so many of them. If you're lucky to go to a very large, diverse campus, you might find a section or two in a few areas. If you, like a lot of people, go to community college or a smaller university, you're lucky to find that one Chinua Achebe book that every professor ever assigns to freshman to clear some "diversity" quota (without actually believing in diversity, I should add).
If one judged the quality of the literature by the amount of books and classes, one would be forced to surmise that English Literature is clearly superior and non-Western literature is a pathetic joke. Which isn't actually true, but the signals are clearly there, the underlying message is clearly demarcated: "Play with that Chinese stuff or that Spanish-language gibberish or that junk from Africa if you must, but when you're ready to be a dignified grownup, we'll be over here with our giant Treasuries of Old White Men Stories when you're ready to join us."
It also occurs to me that the way we in America structure the study of other folks' literature and culture adds to this. If you take a general literature course, you can be assured that you will sit for a semester and have Thing Written By White People In English shoved into your brain ad nauseum. For us, literature defaults to Western, English-language works.
You have to seek out the literature of other cultures in special classes or courses of study that are set aside by themselves, as though they are the special education kids who are so disabled as to need their own short bus and their own special class away from the rest of the smarter, stronger kids. You know, the ones which a great deal of pity is given, but not a lot of serious thought. It's like everyone else's literature is some feeble, sorry little attempt that we must politely give lip service to, the way you tell a child they were the prettiest princess out there even if they were the worst, before we get back to Real English.
In fact, we don't take literature courses here in America, we take English courses. In academia, All Literature = English and anything else is a curiosity, an also-ran.
So I'm not really surprised when I see someone who comes from that academic tradition spouting racism, intentional or unintentional. It didn't surprise me to see people who pride themselves on being decided academics and overeducated telling others that their readings weren't correct, weren't in keeping with the high critical standards they'd been instructed in and did so in defense of racially problematic texts.
Nor am I surprised that it's taken me so long to get to this point in my journey to peel off the layers of racism that I've been embedded with for so many years. Because I have, and I still have that racism and what White Privilege and that hideous cultural training with me, even though I hate it and want to get rid of it.
But that was my brief thought.